HA!
Really!!
Taking an expat position seems like such a sweet deal - the company picks up the tab on many living expenses/rent... and gave us an appliance allowance (after we convinced someone in the home office that our US Fridge would NOT work in India - even with a transformer!) Oh good grief!! Grief is what we got!!
We were taken by our relocation dude to the best Indian equivalent of Best Buy - which was very much NOT like Best Buy but you could get almost any electronics under one roof - including a rice grinder used to make some sort of rice balls. I have absolutely NO CLUE what that is!! So here we are, assured that they will take a visa or mastercard for our purchase... we select our TV, microwave (which actually has specific settings for Indian food - go figure!), iron, vacuum and DVD player... and head to check out...
meanwhile the electricity goes out - twice - no AC and no one missed a step - I really thought it was ironic we were in an electronics store with no electricity (and it was more than a blink - it was a good 20-30 minutes!). Well, we whip out our handy dandy credit card. Swipe, head bobble, mumble, swipe again... NOT GOOD! "so sorry sir, declined" (oh no!) pulled out another card ...swipe, head bobble, mumble swipe again and again... stop swiping my card! arrgghhhh "sorry sir, this one too is not accepted" swipe (for good measure???)well, maybe it is over the daily limit - please split the transaction - swipe tahdah, goes through, swipe goes through, still not at the total amount, swipe, head bobble, "sorry sir, you should call your bank." ring - swipe (really, stop)- ring - it's their bank echoing our sentiments - stop swiping our card!!! Big red flags are now whipping around our head. (I know I told the one card we were moving to India, purchases were being made...). Then swipe - stop swiping the card, give me the card back! "Oh , we used the other bank's card reader for that transaction." How many card readers/banks are you using?! "Three, sir" Oh NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! How many "virtual TVs did we just get charged for?? We still owed 14,000 rupees. (estimate 50 rupees to the dollar) we could either come to the store and re-swipe the card tomorrow (HA! Fat chance!!) or pay the delivery man the cash tomorrow. I opted for cash and delivery in a timely (HA!) fashion.
So this evening I have spent the most of my time online checking the credit cards and on the phone confirming that, yes, we really did try to buy a TV in India, thank you for not processing the eighteen million swipes in the card readers in India! But I have to say, the cards being blocked was actually comforting (now that I am finished with the arrangements and in an airconditined hotel with 4 kids asleep rather than hanging on me in the store!). The THREE card readers, on the other hand, totally unraveled us!! Can't wait to have a "local" bank so this won't be such an occurrence (perhaps I am still looking through rose colored glasses!). That will happen after we go register as foreign residents (I need to learn the proper term here!) I'm certain that will be it's own blog entry.
In the meantime, be thankful for all of those safety measures!! The sweetness of the deal is still up in the air but oh, what an experience for our family!!!!
Posts
A Weekend To Remember
11 years ago
Sitting here reading with my jaw opened and speechless. Totally thankful ...thanks for the post Karen. Need a beer? do you stand out as Americans? How does the public respond to your family? Do the people stink? do you have to pay to potty? Do you need a second beer?
ReplyDeleteAustin update: finally got some rain thurs. and a twinge fri. It is like a sauna. Woke up this morning sat. with sauna windows that you can't see through. Jealous of the tworogers house because they ripped out the carpet and installed fresh new and clean pads and carpet to get ready to sell. Trying to convice the Kitlowski's that they need to buy it!! We got two new puppies Mickey and Moon. The other two had a accident (very sad) and they are no longer with us. It happened about a month ago and was extremely hard for our family to loose them. We are still recovering a bit but the new pups have been a joy and require much less training and time as they have lower excercise requirements. We feel the hole of ya'll being gone two doors down esp as school is nearing and we are starting to come out of our summer shell. Taught VBS this week and Hudson had football camp at the new HS stadium. It is so gorgeous. The jr high looks like a mall. We are spoiled!!!! And we'll appreciate long spans of electricity, and those lovely annoying credit card swipers that we take for granted.
Love ya,
L